Honoring Mandela, Not Reagan
Exclusive: The U.S. government’s relationship with Nelson Mandela was often
strained, from the CIA’s hand in his imprisonment to Ronald Reagan’s veto of a
sanctions bill aimed at getting him freed, lost history that must now be
reconciled, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
As Americans honor the memory of Nelson Mandela, they must grapple with the
inconvenient truth that one of their most honored recent presidents, Ronald
Reagan, fiercely opposed punishing white-ruled South Africa for keeping Mandela
locked up and for continuing the racist apartheid system that he challenged.
Rhetorically, Reagan did object to apartheid and did call for Mandela’s release,
but Reagan viewed the struggle for racial justice in South Africa through a Cold
War lens, leading him to veto a 1986 bill imposing economic sanctions on the
Pretoria regime aimed at forcing Mandela’s freedom and compelling the
dismantling of apartheid.
In explaining his veto on July 22, 1986, Reagan reserved his harshest criticism
for “the Soviet-armed guerrillas of the African National Congress,” a movement
that Mandela led. Reagan accused the ANC of having “embarked on new acts of
terrorism within South Africa.” He also claimed that “the Soviet Union would be
the main beneficiary” of a revolutionary overthrow of the Pretoria regime.
Beyond opposing sanctions that might destabilize the white-supremacist regime,
Reagan argued that “the key to the future lies with the South African
government.” He called for “not a Western withdrawal but deeper involvement by
the Western business community as agents of change and progress and growth.”
Yet, despite Reagan’s speech, Congress enacted the sanctions bill over his veto
as “moderate” Republicans, including the likes of Sen. Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky, rejected Reagan’s go-slow “constructive engagement” with South
Africa’s white supremacists. The Senate vote was 78-21, exceeding the necessary
two-thirds by a dozen votes.
McConnell’s remarks about the bill reflected the concerns of many Republicans
that they would find themselves with Reagan on the wrong side of history. “In
the 1960s, when I was in college, civil rights issues were clear,” McConnell
said. “After that, it became complicated with questions of quotas and other
matters that split people of good will. When the apartheid issue came along, it
made civil rights black and white again. It was not complicated.”
To Reagan, however, the issue was extremely complicated. White-ruled South
Africa provided military support to right-wing revolutionary
movements challenging leftist governments in Africa, such as in Angola where
Jonas Savimbi of the CIA-backed UNITA led a brutal insurgency which involved him
reportedly burning his opponents at the stake.
Indeed, Reagan supported a number of right-wing insurrectionary movements
despite widespread reports of their human rights abuses, including the Contra
rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. The
Contras not only engaged in rapes, murders and acts of terror but were
implicated in cocaine smuggling into the United States.[See Consortiumnews.com’s
“Contra-Cocaine Was a Real Conspiracy.”]
Reagan also backed brutal right-wing regimes in Latin America and elsewhere as
they engaged in extermination campaigns against leftists, including in Guatemala
where Reagan hailed Gen. Efrain Rios Montt as his regime waged genocide against
Mayan Indians considered supportive of leftist guerrillas. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide.”]
Given Reagan’s support for these anti-leftist pogroms a policy sometimes
dubbed the Reagan Doctrine he naturally disdained Mandela and the African
National Congress, which included communists and drew support from the Soviet
Union.
The CIA and Mandela
Mandela had long been a target of Cold Warriors inside the U.S. government,
since he was viewed as one of the young militants resisting European colonialism
and sympathetic to radical change. The CIA often acted to neutralize these
leaders who were considered sympathetic to socialism and potential allies of the
Soviet Union.
In the case of Mandela, I’m told that his arrest in 1962, which led to his 27year imprisonment, resulted from a CIA officer tipping off South African
security officials about Mandela’s whereabouts. But there remains a difference
of opinion inside the CIA whether its role in Mandela’s capture was intentional
or accidental, possibly a careless remark by an intoxicated field agent to his
South African counterparts.
At the time of Mandela’s capture, President John F. Kennedy was trying to break
out of the Cold War framework of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations,
especially regarding CIA hostility toward African nationalists. Kennedy feared
that U.S. support for white rule in Africa would play into Soviet hands by
alienating the continent’s emerging leaders. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “JFK
Embrace of Third World Nationalists.”]
U.S. policy toward South Africa’s white supremacist government grew more
contentious as American attitudes toward race evolved during the civil rights
movement of the 1960s and after the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King
Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, who both strongly sympathized with the anti-apartheid
struggle in South Africa.
President Jimmy Carter further broke from the Cold War mold in the late 1970s
when he elevated human rights as a factor in U.S. foreign policy. But those
human rights concerns were rolled back after Ronald Reagan ousted Carter in the
1980 election.
Reagan initiated a policy of “constructive engagement” toward South Africa’s
white supremacists, meaning that he opposed overt pressure such as economic
sanctions in favor of quiet diplomacy that sought gradual reform of the
apartheid system.
In reality, Reagan’s approach allowed white South African leader P.W. Botha to
crack down on the ANC and other revolutionary movements which Reagan viewed as
pro-communist. Instead of substantive moves toward full citizenship for
blacks, the Pretoria regime instituted largely cosmetic reforms to its apartheid
system.
It was not until the U.S. and global economic sanctions took hold combined with
the world’s ostracism of the white racist regime that Botha gave way to F.W. de
Klerk, who, in turn, cleared the path for Mandela’s release in 1990. De Klerk
then negotiated with Mandela to transform South Africa into a multiracial
democracy, with Mandela becoming its first president in 1994.
Now, as the world honors the life of Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at the
age of 95, the American people must reconcile his inspirational story with how
their much-honored Ronald Reagan opposed the sanctions that finally brought
freedom to Mandela and to his nation.
Given Reagan’s support for the ghastly slaughters in Central America and
elsewhere, some Americans might reasonably wonder why his name is attached to so
many public facilities, including Washington’s National Airport.
While it may be unrealistic to expect this Congress to reconsider the many
honors heaped on Ronald Reagan, individual Americans may want to at least
unofficially delete his name from the airport that serves the nation’s capital
by referring to it again as Washington National.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.